


(forget your past) simply be mine

by campchitaqua



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Happy birthday Quentin Coldwater, M/M, Mosaic Timeline, References to Depression, Reisling Mice, Sex Magic, just gratuitous smut, lessons in how not to be a person you fucking hate, references to past suicidal ideation, that's all this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 16:37:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20781725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/campchitaqua/pseuds/campchitaqua
Summary: “What aren’t you hiding?”“My, uh… My birthday.” He said finally, and the context clicked firmly into place - the cake, Teddy’s anguish the week before, the innocent question this afternoon, the quiet since.“That’s what’s had you bothered?”“I didn’t want you to think- It wasn’t intentional.” He stopped, closed his eyes, barreled onward. “There just wasn’t time, that first year, and then magic was just… gone. And we went through the clock in May, and then we were here.”





	(forget your past) simply be mine

The thing was, Eliot hadn’t thought much about birthdays in years. 

His own birthday had really only ever been an excuse to throw a bigger party than normal, in college. And he didn’t do much thinking about _ before _ if he could help it, especially not since arriving in Fillory, since realizing they were probably here for the long haul.

So when Teddy, all of six, had turned around from the corner of the mosaic where he was carefully placing tiles, and asked “Papa, why don’t we ever make a cake for Daddy’s birthday?” Eliot stopped mid-reach for a tile, stunned.

Why _ didn’t _ they ever celebrate Quentin’s birthday?

Did he even know when it was?

Quentin had frozen in the sand next to him, fingers spread over the tile he’d just placed, barely breathing as he looked somewhere in the medium distance of their yard that was Not Eliot. Which was interesting.

It wasn’t an unreasonable question. They did bake a cake every year in the week after The Deep Snow, to celebrate Teddy’s birthday. Strawberry cake, or at least, what passed for strawberries in Fillory: a blueish fruit with larger seed bulbs on the outside that came from Old Widow Hannah’s hothouse. And last week had been-

Well.

Teddy had wanted to make a cake for Ari. Just in case.

So, of course, Eliot had made a cake, peach flavored, with frosting made from the last of their cream, exchanging concerned glances with Quentin from their cooking space as he told bedtime stories in front of the fire. Teddy had refused to eat it without her, so it sat on their table, magically preserved, while Teddy perked up at every noise from the woods, watching for the moment she would appear between the trees. 

It had taken three days for Teddy to come to the inevitable conclusion that she wasn’t coming back to celebrate with them.

In the silence that rang out after the question was asked, Eliot could practically see all of that in the running machinery of Quentin’s head, in his careful breathing and stiff shoulders. And he didn’t want today to be eclipsed by that, too. Not when they’d just gotten back to something like normal. It was easy enough to reach for Quentin, to settle a hand, gently, at the back of his neck, to say “When you get older, the cake becomes less important than spending time with the people you care about.” He felt Quentin’s shoulders relax, the tension start to seep out of his neck, a small victory.

“Daddy must be really old, then,” Teddy said, and made a face before he turned back to his tiles. Quentin’s eyes popped wide, and Eliot felt his eyebrows retreat up towards his hairline in amusement. 

“That’s right.” Eliot didn’t quite manage a frown as he rubbed at the back of his neck consolingly. “Daddy’s _ really old_.” He managed to hold back his laughter until Quentin - _ thank god _ \- decided to join them in the present, and rolled his eyes with a weary smile of his own.

“You’re two years older than me, asshole. Stop that.” Quentin leaned in where Eliot was half reclined, pretending to pick up a tile so he didn’t have to blast the swear to the entire clearing, before pressing his head to Eliot’s chest to snicker. _ Kids _ . When he lifted his head again, eyes shining and warm, the afternoon sunlight framed him like a halo, and Eliot’s laughter died on his lips. Quentin’s face was close enough that the loose hairs from his ponytail tickled Eliot’s cheek, and _ oh _ , he thought, _ you’re beautiful. _

“How about you make me, Coldwater.” Quentin was close enough that he had to tilt his head down slightly to really see as Eliot pulled his lower lip through his teeth, close enough that Eliot could feel the hitch in his breath against his skin. 

“You’re distracting.” Quentin murmured, lips brushing gently against Eliot’s skin with the words. Not a kiss, but enough to send a shiver through him anyway, even as Quentin pulled away. 

“You love it.”

Quentin hummed in response as Eliot pushed forward to kiss him. The hand on his neck had been meant to settle, but he was not above using it to hold him in place for each encouraging press of their lips. At least, not until Teddy’s voice cut through the clearing.

“Dads! It’s not kissing time. It’s tiles time.” And Eliot released him then, with a laugh, as he stretched out regally on the already completed portion of the puzzle, and watched his boys get back to work.

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

“It’s not like I meant to keep it a secret.”

It burst out of Quentin later, like something sour he couldn’t hold in his mouth any longer. 

The sky was dark and clear overhead, and the heat that had baked the earth earlier in the day had dissipated under Fillory’s twin moons. Small animals moved through the forest, chasing the breeze that drove them to curl up together under their quilt to watch the stars. Quentin had been quiet but not withdrawn, since settling Teddy to sleep; the kind of quiet that meant he was turning over what he wanted to say, how to say it. He lay spread out on his back, head cradled in one hand, and the other carded gently through Eliot’s hair where he had curled against Quentin’s side. Supportive, present, but not pushing.

“Your love for Whiskersnipe?” Eliot asked, squinting. 

The last thing he’d said, a few minutes back, was that he should probably plan to trade with the Reisling Mice before the month was out. The mice loved the cheese Arielle’s sister brought around from her goat farm, and Eliot loved the wine they made. By this part of the high summer, they’d be trading for the grape wine that, if you squinted, resembled a supermarket white from Earth.

“What?” 

“_What _?” Eliot echoed gently, levered himself up on an elbow. “Q, you started a new thought in the middle.” He stroked his fingers across Quentin’s shirt where his head had been resting. “I need you to use your words.”

“Oh.” Quentin looked up and away, his blush visible even in the moonlight, and Eliot couldn’t help himself - he pressed a kiss into his cheek, and then another.

“Yes, _ oh _.” He lifted himself back up, waited for Quentin’s eyes to find him again. “What aren’t you hiding?”

“My, uh… My birthday.” He said finally, and the context clicked firmly into place - the cake, Teddy’s anguish the week before, the innocent question this afternoon, the quiet since. 

“That’s what’s had you bothered?” 

“I didn’t want you to think- It wasn’t intentional.” He stopped, closed his eyes, barreled onward. “There just wasn’t time, that first year, and then magic was just… gone. And we went through the clock in May, and then we were here.” Quentin swallowed. Eliot didn’t reach up to trail his fingers over Quentin’s adam’s apple. 

It required an impressive amount of restraint, which he congratulated himself on silently, left his fingers to trace soothing circles just below Quentin’s collarbone.

“And it didn’t really seem to matter, here.” Eliot confirmed, and Quentin shrugged, his mouth tugged up into a sort-of smile.

“More like-” He cut himself off, shifted his focus up towards the sky, and took a deep breath “Like I was free to let it _ not _ matter, here. The Fillorian calendar doesn’t directly correlate to Earth’s calendar anyway - I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are only 255 days in a year, here. Even though somehow, I guess with magic, we’ve always managed to travel in and out exactly when we meant to-”

“Almost always.” Eliot said, flattened his forearm across Quentin’s chest to brace his chin as he settled in for a Ted Talk on horomancy elements of the Filloran/Earth time dilation, or whatever other adorably nerdy monologue Q was about to embark on.

“Well, yes, with the key, that didn’t work quite like our other trips have, but still…”

And Quentin surprised him, like he always managed to (somehow, even a decade into this… interlude that was likely to become the rest of their lives), when he switched tracks back to the original topic.

“Anyway. It was nice… not to have to pretend to enjoy it, I guess?”

He said it like it was a question.

“You guess?” Eliot asked, his newly freed hand tracing the invisible seam at Quentin’s left shoulder in that specific way that made him squirm, just a little. And he did squirm, dropping the pensive, unsure expression for one that was slightly more annoyed.

“Stop that. Yes. I guess.” He shrugged a shoulder, and Eliot, content that Quentin wasn’t getting broody, didn’t knock on it just to hear its hollow echo. It was tempting, though. “I haven’t really celebrated my birthday in a long time, so.” He took a deep breath.

“You know how I told you that I was hospitalized when I was sixteen?”

_ Oh. _ “I remember.”

“Well. That attempt was on my birthday.” He glanced at Eliot, and then away again. “It kind of set up a pattern for shitty birthdays, and after a while I figured I might as well just roll with it, you know? So Julia and I started celebrating other things, instead, and then I came to Brakebills, and Fillory happened, and then the quest…” He shrugged.

“And it was good to let it not be important.” Eliot echoed, and Quentin’s relief at being understood curved in the bow of his lips as he nodded.

“Right. But I was thinking about it, since Teddy asked, and I realized-” He laughed - a short, scornful sound. “I’m pretty sure it’s today.”

“Today?” Eliot’s head popped up off Quentin’s chest. “As in, Thirdday before the Summer Festival, today? The day that is currently in the process of ending? Is your birthday?”

“July 20th, technically. But the conversion tracks. If not today, then definitely yesterday.” He made a face and waved his free hand dismissively next to Eliot’s head. “Or possibly tomorrow. We don’t really know how getting thrown a hundred and fifty years back into Fillory’s past might have affected the time dilation, and without a control on Earth that we can check-”

Eliot hadn’t necessarily meant to kiss him. But Quentin: his messy, intelligent, beautiful Quentin, really didn’t need to get started describing the intricacies of horomancy again. Not when Eliot was already spinning out more interactive plans for their evening.

“You really. Don’t. Need. To tell me. Exactly. How it works.” He emphasized each word as they came up for air before he slid their lips together another time, teasing against Quentin’s lower lip with his tongue until he opened for him on a moan, and Eliot could lick inside the soft wet heat of his mouth.

“O-kay.” Quentin said breathlessly when they finally broke apart, his eyes sparkling. Eliot wanted to eat him alive. “What should I do instead?”

“About that,” Eliot started, shifting slightly. “I was thinking.” He planted a quick kiss at the corner of Quentin’s mouth. “We could maybe,” another along his jawline. “Make some new memories.” He stopped in his meandering to rub his nose along Quentin’s neck, to spite into the sensitive skin there and soothe it with a kiss, to delight in the soft moan it pulled out of him.

“I’m starting to get that vibe, yeah.” Quentin laughed, and the sound rumbled beneath Eliot’s lips. “Maybe you could, uh, be a little clearer?” He sounded hopeful as he slid both hands into Eliot’s hair, and Eliot laughed into the edge of his collarbone. 

“Clearer? I can do that.” He shifted again - pushed himself up so he could backet Quentin’s hips with his knees and run his hands with intent across the fabric covering his chest. He leaned down, brushed his cheek against Quentin’s, nuzzled into his ear. “I’d like to kiss you, all the way down your body. And then I thought I would get my mouth on that perfect cock of yours and suck you till you come.” He slid his hand down Quentin’s chest as he spoke, played his fingers through the soft hairs in the deep v of the wrap-around shirt, and over his stomach. Then lower still, and felt him start to fill beneath his hand as Eliot gently stroked him through the fabric. “Happy birthday. How’s that for clarity?”

“That-” Quentin bit back a gasp when Eliot scraped teeth over his earlobe in time with his hand. “That’s pretty clear.”

“Good.” 

Quentin let out a frustrated sound as Eliot moved his focus to the ties of his shirt, and he laughed, peppered his face with kisses as his fingers tugged at the knots. He smoothed his hands over Quentin’s stomach and around to his back to ease him up, the better to slide his shirt off his shoulders. It landed somewhere in the grass, but laundry was the last thing on Eliot’s mind as Quentin settled again, freed Eliot to suck sharp kisses down his chest, delighted by the little shivers he was able to tease out of him in concert with the crisp evening air.

“Would you rather take this inside?” Eliot asked, and nuzzled his face into Quentin’s stomach as he shook his head on the pillow.

“I think we- El!” He broke off with a cry as Eliot nipped lightly at the skin just below his bellybutton. “That’s playing dirty.” 

“It is, and you love it.” Eliot teased between pressing soothing kisses against the spot, and he felt Quentin’s indrawn breath before he spoke again, more confidently, this time.

“We shouldn’t. Teddy.” He shivered as Eliot licked a stripe through the dusting of hair on his abdomen, but soldiered on. “I don’t want to wake him.”

Eliot murmured an agreement as he slid farther down the bed, and nestled himself between Quentin’s legs. The line of his dick was soft, but visible through his pants, and Eliot’s mouth watered at the thought of getting it in his mouth, heavy and rigid on his tongue. He leaned down, ghosting his lips over the length, gentle kisses through linen against still-yielding skin, and paused at the head. He could smell Quentin, musk and sweat and chalk and the vaguely woody scent of their soap, and he mouthed at it, wetting the fabric with his tongue until it clung to his skin, until he could very nearly suck the tip into his mouth. He could taste Quentin through it too, that same musk and salt and wood. 

When he looked up again, Quentin was staring at him, eyes dark and hungry. Eliot smirked, and held his gaze steady as he gathered the stays of Quentin’s pants in his mouth, and tugged. Quentin bit down hard on a lip already swollen from kissing, and shifted his hips up to meet Eliot’s mouth as he nosed into the fly of his pants. Another shift of his hips, and Quentin’s cock sprang free, fully hard, sliding against Eliot’s cheek before it thudded heavily against his stomach. 

Eliot wrapped a hand around the base of Quentin’s cock to steady it, and rubbed a thumb beneath the glans. Precome beaded at the tip, and he lapped at it gently to the tune of Quentin’s low groan as he canted his hips up into Eliot’s hand. 

“Are- shit.” Quentin started, shifting again as Eliot pressed a kiss to the head of his dick. “Are you waiting for an invitation?”

“Brat.” Eliot returned with a grin, and sucked Quentin’s cock into his mouth, chuckled as he swore, kept the pressure loose as he slid his mouth down to meet his fingers and pressed his tongue along his length. Quentin’s hands fluttered over his shoulders and settled, gentle in his hair as he worked his mouth and hand in tandem. Quentin rarely pulled, but Eliot thrilled at his fingers as they threaded through his curls, at the hitches in his breathing, the shift of his hips, brushing the fabric of his pants against Eliot’s wrist. He tightened his lips around Quentin’s dick and hummed thoughtfully before he pulled off with a deep breath.

“How did we forget your pants?” He asked with a chuckle, and Quentin rolled his eyes, shifted his hips so that Eliot could tug them off and send them in generally the same direction as his shirt. He was fully naked now, and Eliot still fully dressed. He quivered slightly in the moonlight, his thighs spread wide and his hands flattened against the sheets as he stared at Eliot, waiting. Perfect. In the way he opened himself up, trusting, and the way he fit under Eliot’s hands, velvet soft and full in his mouth. _ Perfect for me _. He licked his lips, and Quentin broke first, fisting a hand in the sheets beneath him with a shiver, looking away as his hips jerked under Eliot’s restraining hands.

“Q?” He asked. He waited for Quentin to focus on his face again, his voice gravelly as he bent between Quentin’s thighs. “I’m going to blow you now.”

Quentin’s eyes widened, dark and aroused, and then, inexplicably, he laughed. The smile lit up his face in the moonlight, revealing the dimples that Eliot loved, that he never saw enough of.

“Is that not what you were doing already?” Quentin asked, breathlessly.

“Oh. No, baby.” Eliot shook his head, hooked one of Quentin’s knees over his shoulder before he leaned in to kiss his way down the inside of his thigh. “That was just a warmup.” 

He steadied Quentin with his hand as he dropped down, low, to mouth at the base. He pressed the flat of his tongue against the underside of his cock and licked a wide, open stripe up his length, caught the tip with his lips and sunk down over him. Quentin swore loudly as Eliot’s lips met his fingers and kept going until his head pressed against the back of Eliot’s throat. 

“_Fuck _.” Eliot agreed silently, breathed through his nose as Quentin shifted under his hands, chasing friction with small movements that weren’t quite thrusts. “You’re gorgeous like this.” Quentin pressed fingers against his cheek, over his temples, and slid them into his hair, tangled them easily in his curls. “I love the way you look with my dick in your mouth.”

Eliot swallowed around him in response, pulled away when Quentin’s hips tried to chase the heat of his mouth, and then pressed him back into the mattress, sucked hollows into his cheeks to make Quentin squirm under the pressure. It wasn’t long until he quivered beneath Eliot. moaned out soft, desperate sounds with each downstroke.

“Oh, I’m- I’m close, Eliot, I-” And he could feel it, the tension in Quentin’s muscles, the way his cock had gone rigid in his mouth. It wouldn’t take much more, he thought, and when he pulled back, he laved his tongue around the head of Quentin’s cock. “Wait. Wait, I don’t-” Quentin tugged gently at Eliot’s hair. Grabbed ineffectually at his shoulders as the words registered and he pulled back. He barely had time to glance at Quentin, concerned, before he started explaining, the words coming in big gulps of air. 

“No, it’s not- I want to - I don’t want you to stop I just-” He broke off with a groan. “Come up here and kiss me.” And Eliot did, propped up on his elbows and knees. Kissed Quentin loose and sloppy as his hands settled on Eliot’s shoulders, and slid around to the back of his neck to pull him closer. Quentin twitched beneath him, hips seeking friction that wasn’t there as he sucked on Eliot’s lower lip, licked the taste of himself out of Eliot’s mouth with a satisfied sigh that had Eliot’s own neglected cock throbbing against the fabric of his trousers.

“Will you fuck me?” Quentin asks when he pulled back for air, panting. He was breathless and sex-drunk and hopeful, and _ those were the same words _ he had used the first time: spread out beneath the stars for Eliot, trembling with the weight of the asking, and always so brave. As if Eliot hadn’t imagined it a hundred times before, as if they hadn’t done that a hundred times since. As if Eliot might find it in himself to refuse.

As if he could ever refuse Quentin anything. 

The way that Quentin laid himself open, every time, the trust and love in his eyes and his smile filled Eliot like bubbling champagne, set his heart pounding painfully in his chest. It was an awesome and terrifying thing, to be trusted not to bruise Quentin’s softest parts. 

It was too much, it would be too much if he let it, so he buried his face in Quentin’s neck instead, nuzzled over the joint of his jaw and sucked a kiss into the pulse point just below it where he didn’t have to _ see _ everything he was risking when he said, “Anything you want, Q. You’re the birthday boy.”

“Oh thank god.” He felt the tension leach out of Quentin’s body through his lips, as his hands found Eliot’s hips, and pulled him down to grind their hips together. “I want you to, El, I need you in me.”

“Eager, Daddy likes that.” Eliot cooed into the skin below Quentin’s ear, just to watch it flush pink so he could kiss all along the color creeping down his neck. It was one of the few things he did in bed (over dinner, at the mosaic, on trips into town) that Quentin still wouldn’t admit to liking. Not that it stopped him from pressing his hips up against Eliot’s again on a moan.

“How do you want it, baby?” He asked, lifted back up to watch Quentin’s face as he trailed a hand speculatively down the fine hairs on his chest and abdomen. “Do you want me to work you open with my mouth, or would you rather I use our spell?” Quentin whined as he tickled fingers over his groin, avoided his dick to reach farther and roll his balls gently across his fingers. But the real show started, as it always did, when his thumb pressed lightly against Quentin’s hole and he squirmed, gasping at the contact, lifted his ass off the mattress helplessly to ask for more.

“I-.” Quentin broke off into a strangled cry as Eliot gently squeezed his balls, and dragged his thumb up to press against the smooth skin below them. “Fuck, Eliot. I’m-” He gasped in a breath. “The spell. I won’t last if you eat me out.”

“Spell it is, then.” He agreed, nearing down against the wave of desire that flooded him at that image: the filthy and unselfconscious noises Quentin would make for him, tongue and fingers fucking into the slick tightness of his ass, coming untouched from the thrust of Eliot’s fingers against his prostate. His own dick ached with that thought, the need to touch nearly overwhelming, and he slipped out of his tied Fillorian pants as smoothly as he could, kicked them off the edge of the bed and out of the way.

Quentin reached between them, shoved up at Eliot’s shirt, and he swiftly removed that, too, as Quentin’s hands journeyed down - when had he had time for a lubrication spell? - and landed slick against his cock as he stroked him with both fists. 

“Oh,” Eliot said, eloquently, exhaling sharply as Quentin stroked him again, the relief of pressure and movement jolting white hot pleasure through his body. He laughed, pressed kisses against Quentin’s chin, his cheeks, his temples as his hips jerked in time with each stroke. “I thought you wanted me to fuck you?” He chuckled between kisses, and Quentin’s hands slid off his erection with a moan.

“I do. Want you to fill me up.” He wiped his hands on the sheets before he reached for Eliot again, hands warm against the back of his neck as he pulled him down into a filthy, frantic kiss. So eager, so ready to please, to let himself be pleased. Eliot dropped down to his elbows, executed the tut over Quentin’s chest, and pressed his fingers over his heart when the spell was finished. 

Quentin shuddered as the spell took hold and arched up off the mattress. pulled taut like a bow string. It only lasted a few seconds before he collapsed back onto the bed, relaxed into the stretch of the spell that was massaging him open for Eliot’s cock. They’d used this one before, and it always edged on too much: phantom fingers pressing you open everywhere, all at once, a rush of fullness that left you empty, after, desperate to be filled again.

He could taste it, too, as he slid his lips against Quentin’s, the razor edge of need thrumming through Quentin’s body and into his, and he kissed him until the spell finished it’s work, until Quentin’s kisses turned quiet, blissed, and needy.

It was nothing and everything to angle himself between Quentin’s legs again, to reach down and lift his knees over his shoulders, to line himself up at his entrance, and push. Quentin was tight and hot and slick around him, and they moaned in sync as Eliot bottomed out inside him.

He hadn’t even started moving yet and it was nearly overwhelming, the wet hot heat of Quentin surrounding him. He could feel when Quentin started to squirm, even the tiniest movement sparking at the heat coiling in his gut, and he leaned forward, pressed Quentin’s knees to his chest as he kissed him again, as minute shifts of his hips sent shivers reverberating between them where they were joined.

“El.” Quentin panted, nearly into his mouth, the word a ghost against his lips under the summer sky. His hands roamed over Eliot’s back, nails bit into his skin as Eliot withdrew almost completely, and then snapped his hips flush against the curve of his ass.

Eliot enjoyed sex as a general rule, had enjoyed sex with many people specifically, in his life. The mechanics didn’t change, the warmth that threatened to bubble over in his chest, the delicious slide of skin against skin. Sex with Quentin always felt like more, though, and maybe that was down to Quentin himself. To the awed way he touched, reverently, every part of Eliot that he could reach. To the way he was present, always, in the moment - his whole attention focused on Eliot, on what he was doing or what was being done to him, even when he was looking away. 

Quentin has always made him feel like the only person in the world when they were fucking, the only one who mattered, and Eliot ached, every time, with the need to return that feeling. 

“Oh, fuck, Q-“ He pressed himself along Quentin’s entire body on the next downstroke, nearly folded him in half so he could reach his mouth again. He cut off his needy, desperate sob, swallowed it down and replaced it with kisses that were another kind of desperate as he worked his way into him again and again. 

“Feels so good, baby, you’re so good for me.” He swore it against Quentin’s lips, praised his body with his words and his dick and his hands as they skimmed along the skin between them. Took another sob into himself as his fingers wrapped around Quentin’s cock.

He stroked in time with his thrusts, adjusted the angle until Quentin was pulled tight again and quivering for each one. Until he shook with the effort of holding himself together. Eliot could feel his own orgasm building, and tightened his fist, picked up speed to race them both towards the edge.

Quentin’s mouth hung open, his brows pulled down in a familiar almost frown that had preceded every orgasm Eliot had ever seen him have. Like he was shocked to discover sex was actually happening, confused that someone else was driving him towards completion, and he tilted his face up to bite sloppily at Eliot’s lip before he gasped-

“Eliot, I’m- I’m gonna-“ And Eliot knew, from years of finding this exact moment together, what he needed, what he was asking for. It’s the easiest thing Eliot had ever given him, every time.

“Come for me.”

And Quentin did, spilled hot and filthy between them as he gasped into Eliot’s mouth. Another thrust, two, erratic and sharp with Quentin’s shudders reverberating through him and Eliot was coming as well. He buried himself completely in Quentin as his own release pulsed out of him, consumed everything but the feeling of Quentin beneath him, around him.

When the world swam slowly back into focus, Eliot’s face was tucked into Quentin’s neck, his chest pressed into Quentin’s legs pressed into his own chest. They breathed together, synchronized as they came back to themselves, bodies heavy and sated, and Eliot counted the heartbeats he could feel around his oversensitive cock before it occurred to him that he could move.

He shifted, wincing slightly as he pulled out, and petted at Quentin’s legs as they stretched around him. Ducked under one to curl up next to him, a comma against his exposed side. Quentin’s expression was still floaty and content, nearly high in the afterglow. Was it any wonder that Eliot _ needed _ to kiss him - the desperate edge gone, disappeared, but the need thrumming through his skin was satiated only by contact.

He felt Quentin trace the cleaning sigil against his skin while Eliot was tracing lazy shapes into his mouth with his tongue, and returned the favor by calling their blankets up from the pile they’d landed in at the foot of the bed.

“Happy birthday to me.” He heard Quentin murmur to himself, and laughed into his cheek, the sound gentle and fizzy.

“And to think, you could have been having that much fun every year.” He quipped, and nipped playfully at the sensitive skin of Quentin’s ear.

“I think we could probably establish some new traditions.”

“Yeah?” Eliot asked, shifted his head further into the warmth of Quentin’s neck beneath the covers. The edges of satiated sleep-fuzz had started to close in on him - tucked up warm and well-fucked under their blanket, pressed up against Quentin and happy in a way he knew now, intimately, but hadn’t experienced before Fillory. Before the Mosaic.

He hummed agreement into Quentin’s skin, and just managed to say, as sleep curled her tendrils around his brain, “Make sure you remember that in a few months when it’s my birthday.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work comes from One and Only, by Adele.
> 
> Many thanks to Sarah (ohmarqueliot) for beta reading this for me, like, four times. You're the MVP, babe. Any mistakes that remain are entirely my own.  
Thank you also to everyone at RAO for cheerleading this excessively indulgent first foray into writing smut, even though it took me an entire two months longer than everyone else to get it written.
> 
> You can hang out with me on twitter ([coldwaughtersq](https://twitter.com/coldwaughtersq)) and on tumblr ([coldwaughtersquentin](https://coldwaughtersquentin.tumblr.com))! Come talk to me about The Magicians!


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